not just the angle of my head tilted down but the actual temperature here in key west today. Which might seem fine for most though it’s twenty lower than the norm, maybe even more if you factor in humidity. the sort of weather that makes your pets want to sleep on your lap, makes your loved ones curl into afternoon blankets and dream in deep long sleep.
me, i was up at five, mind firing this way and that, wondering about salvaging half-gone bananas in the kitchen, fruit flies hovering their crazy figure eights, if changing doctors this late in the game was unwise or if I might be giving up too soon on my dream of birthing in the Sea, if the folks over at Healthy Start thought I was nuts yet happy and hopeful to know they are arranging for me to talk to “someone.”
And now Seava is awake, and I’ve already gone in and tried to nurse her back to sleep but she’s ready to be up just when I’ve carved out this little moment for myself to write. To write. It’s what makes me feel human, this writing, any writing these days. Even a list helps, a grocery list of ingredients and gifts to buy for the holiday and things i need to do or people to call and yet even if nothing gets crossed off, that’s fine, because I’ve written, it gives my day some shape, with words to boot.
Ah, but the crying has stopped. Perhaps a bad dream, or a belly-ache.
It’s cold out there. In twenty minutes I’ll bundle myself up and walk to where I teach dance for a fundraiser for a friend who’s daughter decided this life was just too tough. There’s a bit of a hole in my heart for her, and for her granddaughter who I taught this summer, watched her light up with movement and one day even wear a special glove to honor Michael Jackson.
I don’t understand our Karmic paths, why we choose such difficult roads. Last night I spoke with an astrologer, a gift from a friend. He spoke about relationships, and my own karmic path, how certain aspects of my sign were in certain houses, how this lifetime would be about learning how to be on earth through relationships. I’m much more invested than most, he said, reflecting on my intensity, my honesty, my quest for authenticity. “that’s just how you are wired.”
I wish it were that easy, to see the wiring and follow it accordingly. Apparently I can, if i figure out how to pick the right relationships (and they are all “right” he said), and learn how much responsibility i am to take within them. this sense of karmic wounding and searching for fairness. that true transformation lies in my own difficult family karma, particularly my childhood one.
but do i have the courage to go deep, to look at the family stuff that for so long i’ve intellectualized and “accepted” as fact but without ever really feeling it? critical, he said, so that i can collect freedom in my state of mind, and shift out of that feeling that something is always missing. “your children,” he said “are going to be amazing teachers for you.”
yes. i sense this. in every moment that i try to be there for them, both in the physical and spiritual world, i know that in some ways it heals me too. stresses me a bit, but heals too. i want so much to give them a sense that they are unconditionally loved. that i will always be present for them, that i will SHOW UP when they need me. that they are perfect and enough, just as they are. and to be able to do this for myself? that is the hardest work of all. sixty five degrees. looking down, deep into the abyss of my young self, feeling the chill of winters i have long chosen to forget.
Seava says “eye” and points to her own, then mine. I wonder if she knows how much she will see through that one little eye, and that, when both are wide open and paying attention, the world will disclose itself to her. I hope her heart is strong, that her karmic path is filled with more ease and grace than my own has been so far. I think of the aforementioned granddaughter and my heart cries out for her. May angels and guides be upon her, and carry her forward from her four-year old life and on. May all of our karmic paths guide us towards more light, more joy, more of that sense that we do, in fact, belong here.
windblown…
further along…
i love mornings. my girl’s all smiles, and doesn’t give a hoot what her hair looks like.
